News sites around the world have shown Khalid al-Hamad sink his teeth into what appears to be the lung of a dead Syrian government soldier. His fellow rebels have called for him to be arrested or killed for the act. Human-rights groups have condemned him. But al-Hamad has no regrets.

In an interview conducted via Skype in the early hours of May 14, al-Hamad explained to TIME what caused him to cut out the soldier’s organs: “We opened his cell phone, and I found a clip of a woman and her two daughters fully naked and he was humiliating them, and sticking a stick here and there.”

The video, a 27-second clip in which al-Hamad brandishes organs that appear to be the lungs and heart of the Syrian soldier who lies dead at al-Hamad’s feet, was first seen by two TIME reporters in April. A few weeks later, TIME obtained a copy. Though we had been told by witnesses to the filming that the video was legitimate, we set about authenticating its content, aware of the potential that it could have been faked for propaganda purposes. Al-Hamad has now confirmed that the video is real, and that he did indeed take a bite of the soldier’s lung. (At the time of filming, al-Hamad believed he was biting into the liver. A surgeon who has seen the video confirms that the organ in question was a lung, which somewhat resembles the liver). On May 12, a copy of the video appeared on a proregime website, sparking a flood of Facebook Shares and YouTube views.

Al-Hamad, who is Sunni and harbors a sectarian hatred for Alawite Muslims, said he has another gruesome video of his killing a government soldier from the Alawite faith. (Syrian President Bashar Assad is Alawite; the conflict in Syria is increasingly sectarian.) “Hopefully we will slaughter all of them [Alawites]. I have another video clip that I will send to them. In the clip, I am sawing another shabiha [progovernment militiaman] with a saw. The saw we use to cut trees. I sawed him into small pieces and large ones.” Al-Hamad also explained that even though both sides of the conflict in Syria are using video clips of their own brutal actions to intimidate the other, he believes his clip would have particular impact on the regime’s troops. “They film as well, but after what I did hopefully they will never step into the area where Abu Sakkar is,” he said, using his nom de guerre and referring to the part of Syria he currently controls.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), which validated the video, released a report on May 13 identifying al-Hamad as a well-known commander responsible for the recent cross-border shelling of a Shi‘ite Lebanese village that killed two. The organization called on the U.N. Security Council to refer the Syria situation to the International Criminal Court to ensure accountability for all war crimes and crimes against humanity. “It is not enough for Syria’s opposition to condemn such behavior or blame it on violence by the government,” said Nadim Houry, HRW’s deputy director for the Middle East. “The opposition forces need to act firmly to stop such abuses.” Al-Hamad lashed out at HRW and the U.N. for focusing on opposition abuses when the regime is responsible for similar atrocities. During the interview, he sent links to YouTube videos purporting to show regime abuses. “Why doesn’t the U.N. make an appeal for the shabiha not to do that? The shabiha themselves posted a million clips of them stabbing and raping.”

Al-Hamad, who has been fighting on the front lines near the strategic town of al-Qusayr for the past week, said the video captures the first time he had ever attempted to eat an enemy’s liver. He indicated that the brutality of the regime had driven him to extremes. “You are not seeing what we are seeing, and you are not living what we are living. Where are my brothers, my friends, the girls of my neighborhood who were raped? May God bless them all.”

The Supreme Military Council, which according to the leadership oversees about 90% of the fighting groups in Syria, has issued a poster — circulated on Facebook — calling for al-Hamad’s arrest, saying it wants him “dead or alive.” In response, supporters have posted stylized portraits of al-Hamad cradling a rifle. “We Love You,” reads the inscription.

Al-Hamad pointed out in the interview that the revolution started as a peaceful uprising more than two years ago. “[The Alawites] were the ones who killed our children in Baba Amr and raped our women,” he said, referring to the site of a ferocious battle in the city of Homs that took place in February 2012. Then, referring to the recent massacre of Sunni villagers near the coastal village of Baniyas that has been attributed by rebel groups to the regime, he adds, “They were the ones who slaughtered the children and women in Bayda [near Baniyas]. We didn’t start it, they started it.” He swore to avenge every death. “Our slogan is: An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.”

Aryn Baker is the Middle East Bureau Chief for TIME, covering politics, society, culture, religion, the arts and the military in the greater Middle East, including Pakistan and Afghanistan. She currently resides in Beirut, Lebanon.

Firstly Name one US President who hasn't been involved in Military conflict during his term in office .. If you think back to WWI, Crimea war WWII Korea Vietnam Panama Iraq Afghanistan Libya Yemen Somalia and many other offensive actions around the world that the Us has been directly AND indirectly involved in and then calculate how many lives have been lost (reliable sources claim 30.000.000 since 1945 beginning with the starving to death of millions of German civilians between 1945-47 (read "gruesome Harvest" on google internet archive) and now bring yourselves up to date on events in Syria then it becomes patently clear that the US government has no concern for civilians and they appear to be showing less of a concern for the so called "Rebels" who they are about to arm.. Since Obama is commander in chief he must be held criminally responsible for any reports that are printed by the media that turn out to be (for want of a better word) LIES and rest assured his administration has told way too many to list.. It is easy to understand why the US refused to add their signature to the International Criminal Court and why they refuse to recognize it, It is because the whole administration AND Pentagon and CIA staff would stand trial for War crimes .

@christyhqdecor you're stance is anti- USA. that is fine, most of us know now, thanks to the "free internet", that the US has done many evil things. And in my view the US has done about as much bad as it has done good, millions of people SAVED vs millions of people DEAD. WW1? WW2? KOREA? VIETNAM? Just to name a few conflicts? But are the people from the US more evil than the "Freedom fighters" and "government loyalists" in Syria who rape, plant bombs, and murder? I think not!

@IamaFish@christyhqdecor ROFLMAO.. Anti American ? I have no problem with Red Indians.. You just wrote there 50% of what the US Government has done is good and 50% they have done is evil .. Iamafish Are you a member of the government ? If you are not then i have no problem with you unless you are a Communist, Christian Zionist, Tree hugger, Code Pinker ..

McCain visited the rebels of Syria, they are strategic members of AlQaida - directly and indirectly!! Way to go America and France is just another joker doing what McCain is doing. You can't fight them in one place and pat them on the back in another place ... This is an official endorsement for what they have done so far and for them to come back and do what they loved doing on 9/11.

Integralism is a terrible disease and the only real effective remedy is time. For all the Arabic countries, both in North Africa and in Syria, ( but not only there ) it will take at least a couple of decades ( hopefully ). Western nations hoped to obtain some faster results by the military way, trying to put there the seeds of democracy but that was only an illusion. Every people must follow its own path of real sufference and pain, before reaching the target of a "normal" civil existance. Nevertherless, such kind of "barbaric" behaviour cannot be accepted and anybody who acts like a "cannibal and troglodyte " must be punished, by the human law ( that has nothig to see with religion and it has a common sense at its fundaments ). Only animals, sometimes, do such horrible things, but the follow their istinct, and that is not acceptable for a human being, at any latitude or langitude on this Planet.

French president,françois holland is fighting in mali, the exact same guys he is funding and helping in syria, witht he help of currupt clueless clowns obama and cameron..how much ore stooupid can a so called democratic leader become~? this is pure curruption, pure betrayal of western values, total coward, clueless capitulation to islamonazism and suicidally stooupid and ret+rd beyond belief! Gutter politics at its best and the media, instead od ridiculing and exposing this evil curruption and criminal actions of western leader, they play along with the propaganda machine.saudi barbaria is so proud of all of this ret+rd dhimmies.

I've got a great idea - why don't we give them lots of weapons, training. money and political cover... yeah - that'll be great, then when they're done slaughtering the minorities in the middle east they can come fly planes into our tall buildings in the name of Allah. Good work Cameron/ Obama.

@MaxStone From what I've read, Obama and UN and Russia already had a meeting scheduled for a month or so from now to discuss keeping weapons out of the conflict to avoid escalation. McCain butting in and saying we should arm them is an insult and a show of total disrespect to the president, regardless of how pissed off you may be at Obama at the moment.

I wonder how much money the war machine is stuffing into McCain's re-election campaign? They would be the only ones to profit from arming the rebels. Weapons don't care who buys them or uses them. We should.

@BrendaTN@MaxStone McCain is a mouth piece for Joe Lieberman.. Actually Lieberman has kept himself out of the public spotlight ,,Or has he ?? Judging by this article he wrote in the WSJ he's still the Hawkish Warmonger and propagandist(LIAR) as he's always been..

@BrendaTN@MaxStoneMcCain visited the rebels of Syria who are strategic members or allies of AlQaida - directly and indirectly!! Way to go America! And France is just another joker doing what McCain is doing. You can't fight them in one place and pat them on the back in another place ... This is an official endorsement for what they have done so far and for them to come back and do what they loved doing on 9/11.

Leave be. 16.7 trillion in debt, and many generations of Americans with limited opportunities because of US spending and nation building. If you're so inclined, send food and medical supplies and help the camps in Turkey

The guy was dead, yes? Worry about what's happening to the living, and that is the point this man is trying to make...they are torturing women and children, so he bit into a dead soldier. I think the attacks on women and children are much more barbaric and unacceptable!!

For those of you who never played baseball, America's sport, a pickle is when a runner is trapped between bases and infielders harry him by tossing the ball to-and-fro in order to tag him out. Statistically, the runner who is trapped gets called out when the baseball, held by an opposing player, touches him . Only remarkable cunning, great speed and the ability to "geek" an infielder can get you back to base safely.

Think of the player in the foreground as Russia and the teammate at the top, as Iran. The runner in white is Barack Obama with Dr. Assad as the second base umpire. Doesn't look good for Obama.

What an astounding change of direction! John Kerry now threatening Dr. Assad with unspecified new punishments if he does not attend the next Geneva 2 Conference to negotiate with his exiled opponents. His insistence on Syria's participation is puzzling since the U.S. withdrew its ambassador last year after he, Robert Ford, made a nuisance of himself at best, and a veritable goldmine of Intel about Syria's internal enemies at worst. The U.S. and its allies pretended to care much about the "democracy-loving" activists who were supposedly demanding change in Syria after 40 years of Assad family rule. Yawn. Oh, there were the usual scenes of stark horror at stories of arrests. Things became even more fretful when Dr. Assad would pooh-pooh all the talk about his resignation with the self-assured hauteur typical of prima donna medical doctors. Why it was Ben Casey redux.

But things did not go well for the Americans and their seemingly rudderless policy. You see, as we wrote in SyrPer before, the United States is undergoing changes in its foreign policy outlook. We are now in the age of the "Obama Doctrine" which entails fighting wars through allies or proxies. No more American boots on the ground. Just American drones, surveillance, logistics and air support. That's it.

So the British, French, Turks, Saudis, Qataris and some marginally important nations all ganged up on Dr. Assad in order to overthrow him and break the Fatimid Necklace being formed from Iran all the way to South Lebanon. There really was never any interest in democracy. Nobody actually cared about the miserable, obscenely obsequious, sycophantically slimy internal opposition. It was just a way to further degrade Iran's influence to both appease the bigots of Arabia and to stunt the nation's nuclear program.

But, again, things just did not go well for the NATO allies, including Turkey or nor the Arabians, Saudi and Qatari. Did not go well at all.

American diplomats pretend that Qatar, which has funded most of the terrorist Islamist rodents from Libya, Tunisia, Iraq, Chechenya, Pakistan and the like, is "curiously independent" and unwilling to listen to reason. Qatar, a tiny sore thumb that sticks out into the Persian Gulf, cannot survive without the naked American military American presence inside the bases around Doha, the capital. But the Qataris are "independent-minded". "We just can't get them to stop sending those Salafists to Syria", or something like that.

As it all turned out, SyrPer learned that not only was the U.S. completely on board with Qatar's mindless quest for the perfect zombie terrorist, but that the British terrorist enablers in Turkey actually considered the Jabhat Al-Nusra/Al-Qaeda terrorists to be the very best. British handlers sent these mostly foreign rubes will-nilly into combat without regard for what these savages would do to the native population. But of course, that's the British way.

With the proliferation of foreign Salafists inside Syria getting training and experience, Obama began to figure out something that would have come quickly to almost anyone with a strategic mind: what happens when they come back to somewhere? Hmmm. Well, it's not a good scenario. Even worse, American allies like Jordan and Turkey, will have to face the same monsters Qatar and Saudi Arabia sent to Syria. Today, Austria is the most vocal of the EU nations in opposition to arming these terrorist killers. Belgium also has weighed in and warned about its own Islamist murderers coming back after having honed and perfected their murderous skills in Syria.

But now the pickle. Britain and France are taking failure very hard. Turkey's Erdoghan, a dyed-in-the-wool Muslim Brotherhood extremist and closet sociopath, is even more upset after having promised Prince Porky of Qatar that he would engineer Dr. Assad's demise. It is said that Saudi Arabia's promises to invest in Turkey's future leadership was dependent upon those promises too. All fall down.

Nothing seems to be going Obama's way. The Syrian situation is beginning to look more and more like what John Esquire just told me over the telephone: Obama's Bay of Pigs. The U.S. facilitates the arrival of terrorists inside Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Occupied Palestine; the U.S. facilitates arms transfers through its proxies; the U.S. facilitates assassination plots against Syria's high command; but, in the final analysis, comes up with nothing but the "Mother of Future Headaches" in the form of the burgeoning ranks of international Jihadists killers. So the U.S. does a Kennedy. Leaves the terrorist bunglers in the lurch.

Actually, Chairman Mao's dictum wasn't even honoured in China. During
the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution, Red Guards in China's
southern Guangxi province took rather literally the order to consume
their capitalist reader enemies. According to investigative reports that
leaked out in the 1990s, at least 137 people were eaten at banquets
ordered by local officials. One woman was recorded by an internal
inquiry as having torn the first strip from the roasted body of a school
headmaster, her boyfriend's father, to prove that despite the personal
connection she was as "Red" as the best of them.

There is a point to this. Mutilating your enemy's body and even
eating his flesh are not, I think we can agree, good things, but they do
have a long history. You can go back to the Iliad for the earliest
great description of what happens when the bloodlust is up. As Hector
lies dying in the dust, he prays his conqueror Achilles "by his life and
his knees" to send his body home to his parents for a decent burial and
not leave it for the dogs, but Achilles just glares at him mercilessly.

"Dog, talk not to me neither of knees nor parents," Achilles says.
"Would that I could be as sure of being able to cut your flesh into
pieces and eat it raw, for the ill you have done me, as I am that
nothing shall save you from the dogs."

His fellows join in. "The other Achaeans came running up to view his
wondrous strength and beauty; and no one came near him without giving
him a fresh wound. Then would one turn to his neighbour and say, 'It is
easier to handle Hector now than when he was flinging fire on to our
ships' and as he spoke he would thrust his spear into him anew."

Finally, and most famously, Achilles makes slits in Hector's heels
and uses ox-hide ties to attach them to his chariot, dragging the corpse
around the battlement's of his foe's city.

Yet Achilles, though a petulant schoolboy in much of the Iliad, is
still a great hero: as, it is said, was the British soldier (more
recently) accused of slicing off the ears of dead Argentinians in the
Falklands. Students of the Crusades reading of the ongoing and bloody
battle over the town of Maarat al-Numaan, south-west of Aleppo, in the
current conflict, can hardly fail to recall a previous "clash of
civilisations". During the siege of the same city in 1098, the Crusaders
were reported (by their own side: no videos available) to have roasted
the bodies of Muslim children on spits and eaten them.

Do these reminiscences lessen the crime? Of course not. But they make
me wonder whether the horror caused by this latest video, which has
been "shared" it seems far more than any of the other monstrosities this
conflict has thrown up, is because such mutilations are now less
commonly practised, more unusual, than in the past.

By contrast with the above, the overwhelmingly respectful funerals I
have witnessed in Syria over the last couple of years have been rare
moments of peace and higher feeling amid the carnage. A colleague the
other day, while we were in Syria, described talking to a father who
went through the lines to reclaim the body of his son. We were both
reminded of the Homeric account above, which is why it was in my mind:
after, Priam, Hector's father, comes to beg Achilles for the body, and
with its honourable return and cremation the Iliad ends: "Such was the
burial of Hector, breaker of horses."

There is a tension sometimes between journalistic and moral
narratives. Although of course overall we may try to point out the bad
so that the good can triumph, within that ambition there is also this:
an event is more newsworthy if it is rare or strange. Other, worse, more
important horrors are overlooked because they are common. In the town
of Baniyas on 2-3 May, there seems to be little doubt that a pro-regime
militia swept through two Sunni neighbourhoods slaughtering large
numbers of those they found, shooting and knifing many to death. There
are photographs – you can find them online – of piles of corpses of
little children, aged from two or three upwards. Altogether there seem
to have been scores of them.The nature of this crime cannot be fully
revealed, because no newspaper, including this one, would publish such
pictures. The media are happy to present a pixilated image of a
heart-eater, however.

As a result, and of course because we have become so inured to such
massacres, the Baniyas incident has received comparatively little
international attention. Yet the killing of women and children in war
has been regarded as an unspeakable crime throughout history: the
Athenians' massacre of the Milans in the Peloponnesian War caused great
shock and debate at home, is referred to as the exemplar of genocide
from ancient history, yet even they merely killed the males, and sold
the women and children into slavery. That precedent may have often been
honoured only in the breach – think of the hundreds of thousands of
Muslims Genghis Khan killed as he swept through the Middle East, the
same Genghis who is regarded as a hero in the Far East today – but it is
still a fundamental principle.

Somehow, as well as honouring the dead, we have to keep our attention
focused on the living, otherwise there is no hope. Suggestions on how
we journalists can do this, let alone the leaders tasked with
responsibility for ending the conflict, are gratefully received.

Just to confirm what kind of people we are facing in Syria. In the beggining of the revolution of dginity and freedom a senior security service's general(Jamil Hassan, by the way he is an Alawi like all the majority of this criminal organisation's members) told to his insane president that he is ready to kill one million syrians(he meant Sunnis) and then be tried before the criminal international court. shame on you go clean your heart and conscience before you make a judgment on the victims.

@herman Do you have any fact to backup your statement? no.... You are a sectarian rat a filth on this planet. who wants to separate mulsims and to fight each other. Sectarians rats like you are not welcomed in Syria.

@bklyn45hPlease do not forget that the rule of your fanatics criminal Alawis is
plenty of massacres and genocides. We did not forget what the father of
your stupid bashar did in Hama in 1982 when he killed more than 40000
people, the massacre of Aleppo in the Dawn of one hollyday when his
criminal troops killed more than 200 innocent people, one of them was my
professor in the civil engineering faculty of Aleppo. The atrocities
that we see now is what your regime was teaching his followers to do. I
remember when i was kid i saw a programm on TV about the training of the
special syrian troops when the criminal officers were forcing the
soldiers to slaughter innocent animals and make them eat their flesh
uncooked and the savages alawis soldiers were happy by doing that
barbaric act.

This was done in the presence of the head of the Alawite mafia Hafez and his
brother. by the way it is just a part of the complete video

@herman@bklyn45hyou wrote 'fanatics criminal Alawis', that is exactly the driving force behind the subhuman behavior in this article. Survivor lessons and eating snakes is no way close to eating a fellow human being heart out. I am glad the 'Alawi' president is cleaning the country from these mutants and those who support them.

@rave123@herman@Okeanos963@bklyn45h We all know that those poor people where surounded by soldiers and are forced to make such statement and showing their enthousiasm. Your methods are very rudimentary and stupid one. You have just to answer this question: IS IT NORMAL FOR ONE FAMILY TO RULE A COUNTRY WITHOUT CONTEST FOR MORE THAN 4 DECADES AND WHEN INTHE 21 CENTURY.

@rave123@herman@Okeanos963@bklyn45h I do not want to watch anything to learn the truth. i know it very well. i lived in Syria for decades and i lived all kind of humiliation, poverty, nepotism and discrimination. Those are criminal and should go at any price

@rave123@herman@Okeanos963@bklyn45h HA HA Ha, Do not let laugh on you. We all know that all these poor people that you mentioned(Prime minister, Fahd Jassem) are only puppets and could not take the smallest decision.When the prime minister wants to hire a attendant in his office he should get the permission from the SPECIAL OFFICE which directly related to the security service. The minister of defence can not reassign one soldier from barraks to another one without the permission from the security sevice which are ALAWIS. Any security sevice member could clean the ground with the ministers that you mentioned above.

The Alawis Army? STOP lying.....The mojoraty of the Syria Army are Sunni and Commander-in-Chief General Fahd Jassem al-Freij is Sunni. Prime Minister of Syria Wael Nader Al-Halqi is also Sunni. half of the Syrian government are sunni and the other half is muslim Alawis and Christians... Syrian people Sunni, Alawi, shia, Christian most of them support Assad! The so called "fsa" are terrorist supported by US, UK, Saudi, Qatar and Israel and those terrorist are wahhabi (not muslims but they kill in the name of islam) they are trained by NATO in Turkey and Jordan... Obama just paid $250 million for those terrorists....

@Okeanos963@herman@bklyn45h You have to understand that the military culture that the alawis have established in Syria during more than 50 years have led the syrins to this consequences make the people so violent. The Alawis had militarized systematicaly the syrian society during their reign. They imposed the military instructions from the elementary school until the university. I remember once i was going to my university and met a Swedish gentelman in the fornt of our faculty of civil enginering(inside the court of the faculty) he was afraid and thought that he was lost by entering a military base because he saw many tanks ,artilleries and soldiers. I expalined to him that he was indeed inside the university and what he saw was a military training for the university students. You have to know that, when you impose this violent culture in the society you have to expect that you risk to turn the society into a violent one. All waht you see now in Syria is because of these barbarians uneducated Alawais who came from their isolated mounatians to enslave the syrian people and maintain the power at any price.

Does anyone still think the 'Palestinian' problem is the root of Middle East woes or the cause of the Arab-Israel conflict? This incident displays the insane intolerance of one Arab Muslim Syrian towards another. Imagine the degree of intolerance felt towards Jews; that violent bigotry is the explanation for all the trouble.

@LoudonCleary Do not forget that jews were tolerated and lived peacefuly with muslims for thousands years and never had a holocaust like the one they had when they lived with the very tolerant european civilisation. Go and read how many jewish was oppresed , expelled from spain during inquisition and the end of the muslim era in spain where they lived peacefully with the muslims or when Philippe IV the king of France had seized their assets and expelled them from France. they all were welcomed in the Arab's lands. Then we were rewarded when they seized, killed and expelled the palestinian people from the land of their ancesters.

In the aftermath I recall viewing scenes of Middle Eastern people rejoicing in the streets in numerous countries including Syria. That you may not have seen them doesn't invalidate my comment. Please think before you criticize.

Hey John, I think thats what the problem is, over there, theres not enough testicles to go around. Why else would they treat their women like they do, all the cyalis in the world couldn't make one of those barbarians a man. They ALL must squat to urinate!